Paper tanks

No... not model tanks made of paper (is that kind of origami even possible?), but tanks who are squisher than normal.

Couple of weeks back, I was bored, and decided to PuG something that was easy to heal, since I wanted to fine tune a new healing style (HoTs instead of direct heal). It worked very very well in conjuction with Bob, a paladin friend of mine since BC times. In the two test instances that I ran with him, and K, namely heroic Violet Hold, and heroic The Culling of Stratholme, which is notoriously difficult to heal, I was *gasp* complaining that he wasn't taking enough damage, since all I had to do was to keep up Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom (1) on him, and I could happily fire away with Hurricane. Bob's pally isn't uber geared; he's roughly in 2T7 with a smattering of heroic gear, and same goes for me, with a smattering of 25man gear. He wasn't taking huge spike damages, and by the time I wanted to Nourish him, my HoTs already did the job for me. Previously, all I did was cast Regrowth, Nourish, and Wild Growth, which was a more hectic way of healing heroics, IMO.

Armed with this newfound confidence, I ventured forth into a PuG for heroic Nexus, with a paladin tank with some pretty nice heroic gear. Alas, it all went awry, when even on the 4-mob trash pulls before Grand Magus Telestra, the paladin tank was taking such huge spike damages that I couldn't even stop for a second to cast my HoTs, but had to use direct heals all the way. This trend continued all the way to the end of the instance. After a minor conference with some people who do know something about healing and paladin tanking, aka B and Z and Bob, I came to the conclusion, that it really wasn't my lack of healing, but rather, that said paladin tank in heroic Nexus was not consistent about keeping his Holy Shield up, resulting in large spike damage.

The point is, if you are armed with an array of abilities that enable you to do your job, use them! There's not much point in shying away from them, such as -2000 points, unless you want to make your healers work harder. Speaking of -2000 points, new evidence has come to light that he actually really does have a tanking macro, and has put Taunt inside it.

Geez... if you want to tank, learn how to take less damage, not more! Since almost all of my friends have healers, they know how irritating it is to come across a paper tank, or worse, be actually healing that paper tank. This actually reminds me of the time I was healing a paper death knight who was tanking 25m Patchwerk, and his HP had the annoying tendency of dropping from 100% to 10% in less than 1 second, and this happened roughly 15-20 times throughout the whole fight.

Moral of the story: Learn when and how to use your tanking abilities, learn to use the correct gear for each individual boss (more on that next time), and above all, if you want to tank, do it properly.